Hope on Equal Pay Day

April 10, Equal Pay Day, marks the recognition that women today earn on average 80 cents for every dollar paid to men. The date is of significance since it reflects the gender wage gap – as American women must work an added four months to match her male counterparts’ salary of the year prior. It’s important to note that African-American women earn 67 cents for every dollar paid to their white male counterparts and that Latina women make 54 cents for every dollar a white man makes.

This past Monday, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit found that employers cannot justify different pay scales for male and female employees by using prior salary history. The late Judge Stephen Reinhardt authored the court opinion which vehemently upheld the tenants of the Equal Pay Act of 1963. Reinhardt wrote, “The question before us is also simple: can an employer justify a wage differential between male and female employees by relying on prior salary? Based on the text, history, and purposes of the Equal Pay Act, the answer is clear. No.” The majority found that accepting the county’s argument “would perpetuate rather than eliminate the pervasive discrimination.”

According to the World Economic Forum, in 2017, United States ranked 49 out of 144 major and emerging global economies when measuring the gaps between women and men on economic participation and political empowerment. Although above the global mean, the U.S. ranks far behind similarly wealthy nations like Finland and the United Kingdom. Iceland, which has ranked first for the lowest gap between men and women for nine consecutive years, has had decades of egalitarian legislation, quotas, and profound participation of women in politics that arose from men and women sharing power as decision-makers and having men support the power redistribution concept of gender equality. Furthermore, in January 2018, Iceland became the first nation to require companies evaluate every employee to obtain government certification that men and women are paid equally.

In the era of “#MeToo,” we have seen the participation of American women running for political office soar. 309 women, both Democrats and Republicans have filed candidacy for the U.S. House of Representatives, 29 and likely more women running for the U.S. Senate, 40 women are running in governors races’ and 34,000 women have expressed interest in running for federal and local office in 2018 according to Emily’s List. Hopefully, this number will grow in future election cycles.

Equal Pay Day serves as a reminder of the sharp disparity between the wages of men and women in America. Continued efforts, which include litigation, grassroots campaigns, legislative advocacy, and electing progressive-minded women to political offices will only further strengthen the fight towards gender parity.

Voter Registration and the March For Our Lives

All of the talk, slogans, signs, tweets, and agitation that consume our lives are meaningless without voting. Every day of the year political battles are fought in the court of public opinion, and in courts of law, but only on select days may we render final verdict on what the direction of our communities should look like. The leaders of the March for Our Lives, the historic public demonstration against gun violence that occurred on March 24 in Washington, D.C. and around the world, understood this well. That is why the March included an equally historic voter registration drive, administered by the voter registration entity HeadCount. As a participant in that drive, I registered voters for the first time in my life, an experience that was empowering and meaningful, but also concerningly difficult.

The day started with a training session for registration volunteers. Admission to the event was restricted, for security reasons. Inside, I saw a sea of volunteers in neon yellow shirts, and so I was not surprised when organizers informed us they were expecting it to be the largest voter registration drive in US history. The training itself covered the legal constraints on doing voter registration work. Organizers drilled into us the most important points: we absolutely could not advocate for a candidate, party, or position, could not discriminate against prospective registrants because of their political affiliation, and could not fill out any portion of the form for them. That all made sense, but because we were expecting to register voters from around the country, and each state’s voter registration rules are different, we had a lot left to cover.

As someone who does voting rights work here at ACS, I have more knowledge about election law than the average citizen, but I was still intimidated by how much liability I and others were potentially taking on. For instance, we learned that in Florida, there are criminal penalties for failing to return a completed registration form in 48 hours. In Texas and elsewhere, the laws were too onerous for us to do registration at all. We had to make clear to registrants that if they were an ineligible felon, just filling out the form could get them back in legal trouble. To help us navigate tricky cases, a team of lawyers from Fair Elections Legal Network were standing by on a hotline. Still, other states made registration simpler and less intimidating. In many states, people younger than 18 can pre-register to vote, so that they become active voters immediately on their 18th birthday. It was especially meaningful for us to pre-register young people at the March, since it was designed by high school students for the purpose of youth empowerment.

As I went out to start registration work, I had some early success. I pre-registered a high school student riding the Metro, who happened to live in Takoma Park, Maryland, one of the few jurisdictions in America where people under 18 can vote in municipal elections. At the rally, I held my clipboard high and shouted for attention, which was difficult in such a dense crowd, but ultimately, I registered 4 voters, 3 of them pre-registrations. As difficult and tiring an experience as it was, I can’t understate how exciting and purposeful it was for me to personally register other people to vote. More people than I could count thanked me for doing registration work, which was validating.

Overall, I am glad that I had this experience, and am proud of the work I did. I also came to appreciate online and automatic voter registration even more than before, because chasing people down with paper forms is hard work! The experience even called into question for me the need to have voter registration, and the troublesome origins and history of registration itself. Nevertheless, so long as we have registration, we need people to register voters. The public should pay attention to voter registration and how it is done as a matter of public policy, because it is the gateway to accessing all the rest of our political system, and politicians and interests who view voting as a threat are standing in the door.

The Supreme Court’s Decision in Encino Motorcars LLC v. Navarro: A Turning Point for the FLSA as a Protective Statute for Employees?

The United States Supreme Court’s April 2 decision in Encino Motorcars LLC. v. Navarro was certainly a setback for employees at car dealerships who work as service advisors. The Court ruled that service advisors were not eligible for overtime under the Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938 (FLSA) under an exemption that does not mention “service advisors” at all. But a dictum in the Court’s opinion represents an even greater blow for more than 70 years of interpretations under the FLSA and is a bad harbinger for enforcement of the Act in years to come.

First, the original meaning and context of the FLSA should be recalled. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt called on Congress to pass the FLSA in 1938 to ensure “all our able-bodied men and women a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work.” H.R. Rep. No. 93-913 at 5-6.  The Supreme Court in cases going back to 1942 stated the purpose of the FLSA was to protect workers from the “evil of overwork as well as underpay.” Overnight Motor Transp. Co. v. Missell, 316 U.S. 572, 578 (1942).

The FLSA, like other employment statutes at the time, defined employment extremely broadly. “Employees” are those who are employed by an employer, and to “employ” is to “suffer or permit to work.” The Supreme Court eventually developed the “economic realities” test of employment, where the court decides whether, as a matter of economic reality, the workers are dependent upon the business to which they render service. This broad protection for employees, however, is limited by the exemptions in the statute both from minimum wage and overtime. There are more than thirty specific exemptions from overtime, as well as for employees whose primary duties are in a bona fide administrative, executive, or professional capacity. These exemptions have been the subject of rulemaking and countless lawsuits over the Department of Labor’s authority to create rules because the statute does not define these terms, nor provide a salary threshold over which exempt employees must earn.

In Encino Motorcars LLC v. Navarro, the issue was the exemption for any “salesman, partsman or mechanic primarily engaged in selling or servicing of automobiles…” The employees at issue in the case did not themselves sell parts or automobiles, nor where they mechanics, so the only question was whether these employees at car dealerships who meet and greet car owners, solicit and suggest services, and provide car owners with cost estimates, were not eligible for overtime because they fall under the exemption.   The Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals applied a canon of statutory construction known as the “distributive canon,” which essentially examines the parallel construction of the statutory language to determine whether Congress meant to exclude the workers at issue from overtime. The Ninth Circuit also based their decision on the legislative history as well to determine that service advisors were not contemplated by the exemption, and that the exemptions should be “narrowly construed.”

In a 5-4 opinion, the Supreme Court reversed the Ninth Circuit and decided that the service advisors were not entitled to overtime, with Justice Clarence Thomas writing the opinion joined by Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Anthony Kennedy, Justice Samuel Alito, and the newest Justice, Neil Gorsuch. First, the Court held that the Ninth Circuit’s use of the distributive canon was not binding on the Court, and two, that the statute when viewed “in context” did not allow overtime for the service advisors. That context, apparently did not include legislative history, which seemed to support the position that service advisors were not among the employees Congress intended to exempt.

The Court went further to explain its result in dicta that will surely be used by management lawyers in future cases. Although exemptions like this one have been narrowly construed for decades, that canon of construction is not owed deference because the FLSA gives no “textual indication” of the canon. This conclusion is ironic since no canons of construction are written in statute--they are judge made and as legal realist Karl Llewellyn wrote in his seminal work on statutory construction, “[t]here is always more than one available correct answer and the court has to select.” Karl Llewellyn, Remarks on the Theory of Appellate Decision and the Rules and Canons About How Statutes Are to Be Construed, 3 Vand. L. Rev. 395, 396 (1950).

In the dissenting opinion, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg wrote for herself and three other justices (Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan) that the service advisors should have received overtime pay. According to the dissenters (and the Ninth Circuit’s opinion being reversed), the majority’s view that Congress must have intended more employees of the dealership than just the mechanic, parts(wo)man and salespersons is the equivalent of exempting a receptionist at a dentist’s office because the dentist is exempt. The consequence of the Court’s decision would leave the most “vulnerable workers liable to exploitation.”  Justice Ginsburg wrote in footnote seven of her dissent that the majority had rejected the worker-protective principle “without even acknowledging that it unsettles more than half a century of our precedent.” See also Marlene Trestman, Fair Labor Lawyer: The Remarkable Life of New Deal Attorney and Supreme Court Advocate Bessie Margolin (Bessie Margolin successfully argued many of the cases where the Supreme Court repeatedly stated that FLSA exemptions should be narrowly construed).

Last month, I participated in a symposium co-hosted by ACS and the National Consumers League at Georgetown Law Center on this year’s 80th Anniversary of the FLSA where other symposium participants and employee advocates celebrated many of the advances in fair working conditions made by the statute. I hope that courts limit the use of this new principle that the exemptions to the FLSA should not be narrowly construed to the facts of Encino Motorcars, because the Court’s new sharp turn the Court in Encino Motorcars is at odds with the purpose and intent of the FLSA, as the Court has affirmed in decades worth of decisions. The unity of the five justices in the majority (without any of them writing a separate opinion concurring in the result but not in the reasoning) suggests that a majority of the Court wants to take a sharp new turn in how the FLSA has been interpreted. That would go counter to the stability and predictability in this area of law, in an era where economic inequality is wide and continues to grow.

Mueller's Big Reveal Is Coming, and it Could Be Huge

A Washington Post story describing how special counsel Robert Mueller intends to release reports of his findings "to answer the public’s questions" confirms what some Justice Department veterans have long maintained: That criminal indictments are not Mueller's only goal -- or even his primary goal. What he's really after, these observers say, is the whole story. And then he intends to tell it.

In a typical criminal investigation, prosecutors are limited to only disclosing investigative details directly relevant to prosecutable crimes. That's why special counsel Patrick Fitzgerald never disclosed the vast majority of the incriminating evidence he discovered about the leak of Valerie Plame's identity by the Bush/Cheney White House; the only case he felt he could make was against Cheney aide Scooter Libby, for obstruction.

But some veterans of the Justice Department realized early on that Mueller's remit went well beyond simply investigating prosecutable crimes. The most obvious thing Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein did in Mueller's May 2017 appointment letter, was give the special counsel the authority to prosecute crimes arising from his investigation. But Rosenstein also wrote that Mueller is "authorized to conduct the investigation confirmed by then-FBI Director James B. Comey” to the House Intelligence Committee in March 2017.

Here's how Comey described that investigation to the committee:

I have been authorized by the Department of Justice to confirm that the FBI, as part of our counterintelligence mission, is investigating the Russian government's efforts to interfere in the 2016 presidential election and that includes investigating the nature of any links between individuals associated with the Trump campaign and the Russian government and whether there was any coordination between the campaign and Russia's efforts. As with any counterintelligence investigation, this will also include an assessment of whether any crimes were committed.

"This was and is, first and foremost, a counterintelligence investigation, designed to examine the exact scope of what Russia did with respect to the 2016 election and, most importantly, what the Russian threat is with respect to future operations" said Martin Lederman, a Georgetown Law professor and former deputy assistant attorney general in the Department of Justice's Office of Legal Counsel

Prosecution was literally an afterthought.

"Many people are obsessed with the question of who is going to be indicted and for what -- which is only a part, and not the most important part, of what Mueller was tasked to do," Lederman said.

Mueller's central task, Lederman said, "is to get to the bottom of all this -- thereby to help Congress and the intelligence community prevent Russian involvement in future elections."

Indeed, criminal investigations and counterintelligence investigations are two entirely different – almost antithetical – exercises.

"Counterintelligence investigators are rarely thinking about building a criminal case," said Mary McCord, who, as acting head of the National Security Division, oversaw the Justice Department's Russia probe until just before Mueller's appointment.  After more than 20 years at the Justice Department, McCord resigned last May and now oversees litigation at Georgetown University's Institute for Constitutional Advocacy and Protection.

Counterintelligence investigators focus almost single-mindedly on two questions, she said: "What are the intelligence threats to the U.S.? And how do we counter those threats?"

Even clear criminal action may never be prosecuted because "you'd have to reveal such sensitive and classified information in court, it's just not worth it," she said.

The central work product of a counterintelligence investigation, by contrast, is reports, distributed through intelligence channels. "There is a very robust amount of writing and reporting that takes place on a daily basis by members of the intelligence community," McCord said.

Fully understanding an intelligence threat also requires a much more rapacious attitude toward gathering information than just trying to build a criminal case against a defendant.

"Information becomes an end to itself in a counterintelligence investigation," said Frank Figliuzzi, a 25-year FBI veteran who, as assistant director for counterintelligence, led FBI counterintelligence investigations worldwide.

Counterintelligence investigators, Figliuzzi said, aren't just interested in a possible foreign target's illegal activities. "You want to know everything about the waking hours of this intelligence officer. You want to know how he lives and breathes. You want to know how he thinks. And why is that important? Because every bit of data you learn about him may help you to counter him, to recruit him, and to understand strategies," he said.

Figliuzzi wouldn't say how this approach might translate to American suspects. But just last week, when FBI agents stopped American lawyer Ted Malloch at Boston's Logan airport and questioned him about his involvement in the Trump campaign, Malloch complained to the Guardian that the federal agents “seemed to know everything about me” and warned him that lying to the FBI was a felony.

Balancing secrecy with the public's need to know

The results of counterintelligence investigations are typically among the least likely things to ever be discussed in public. The theory is that the less said, the less the enemy knows. But every party that could possibly do something to avoid it happening again is fully briefed.

In this case, those parties are the U.S. Congress and the American people.

Figliuzzi said he is convinced that Mueller will issue a report. But, he said, Mueller has "quite the dilemma on his hands".

Typically, when counterintelligence investigations reach a conclusion, "there's a lengthy report, generally called an LHM, or letterhead memo," Figliuzzi said. But they are highly classified.

So Figliuzzi wondered how Mueller will tell his story without disclosing extremely sensitive sources, methods and techniques.

"Let's say you've got an NSA intercept where Trump's on the phone with Putin, clearly indicating conspiracy to commit a crime. If you need to write that up for Congress for impeachment proceedings, how the hell do you do that?"

In that case, declassifying and going public would mean "giving up the microphone in Putin's office."

The Washington Post report said that Mueller "told Trump’s lawyers that he is preparing a report about the president’s actions while in office and potential obstruction of justice, according to two people with knowledge of the conversations."

The Post said that "Mueller’s investigators have indicated to the president’s legal team that they are considering writing reports on their findings in stages — with the first report focused on the obstruction issue, according to two people briefed on the discussions."

And the Post quoted a person "familiar with the discussions" saying that Mueller's team "said they want to write a report on this — to answer the public’s questions — and they need the president’s interview as the last step.”

One of the Post reporters, Robert Costa, told MSNBC Mueller's team wants that report to come out in June or July.

McCord said there is precedent for the government declassifying and disclosing what would otherwise be considered secret or sensitive counterintelligence information when the benefit of that disclosure outweighs the harm.

For instance, she noted that President Obama insisted on the release of some information about Russian hacking, just before Trump took office. And after the November 2014 hacking of data from Sony Pictures, the FBI disclosed a great deal of information, both to encourage people to improve their cybersecurity practices -- and to point the finger of blame very clearly at North Korea. "[W]hen we can’t lay hands on people, as often as possible, we’re going to call out the conduct," then-FBI Director Comey said at the time. "And as often as we possibly can we’re going to say here’s what happened and who did it."

"Those are things the government rightly thought the American people should know," McCord said. "There are times, when even though it's of interest for counterintelligence purposes, the need for the public to know about it becomes obvious to people in government."

And in this case, McCord said, "It's not just a national security issue, it's an issue that is tied to a fundamental tenet of our democracy: Elections."

Some concerns have been raised that Mueller would be handcuffed by Federal Rule of Criminal Procedure 6(e), which imposes strict limits on the disclosure of grand jury materials. Special counsel Kenneth Starr, for instance, had to get a court order allowing him to disclose grand jury materials in his eponymous report.

McCord said that Mueller would obviously "have to be aware of that in making any kind of report." But, she said, "it's possible that some of what he might include comes from things that aren't 6(e) privileged as well."

Mueller's first report – on obstruction of justice – could avoid many of the thorny disclosure issues. Emptywheel blogger Marcy Wheeler, who has been rigorously analyzing the Mueller investigation, has pointed out that the obstruction investigation involved a lot of volunteered information, rather than grand jury testimony and subpoenas.

And it most likely doesn't involve the "crown jewels" of the intelligence community: signals intelligence, or SIGINT, gathered through surveillance and intercepts.

The real action is behind the curtain

So far, the clues that have emerged directly from Mueller or his office have all been in the form of documents related to criminal indictments, so that is where much of the public speculation has centered.

But as Asha Rangappa, a former special agent in the Counterintelligence Division of the FBI field office in New York City, wrote in The Hill in January, "trying to make sense of a counterintelligence storyline by looking only at the criminal charges that stem from it is like trying to make sense of a full-length movie by watching only a few scenes: The full story will not be apparent, because key characters and events and plot lines are missing."

Teachers Walkout Without Bargaining Rights - Why it Matters for Janus

In deep red states across the country — from West Virginia to Oklahoma, from Kentucky to Arizona — educators are coming together to make their voices heard. In a display of activism and solidarity with few precedents in recent memory, tens of thousands of teachers, students, and supporters are marching on state capitols to make their demands known.

This wave of statewide school walkouts has taken many by surprise, but the chronic neglect and underfunding of public education that led to this moment has been years in the making.

For example, in Oklahoma, a decade’s worth of feckless tax cuts has starved public schools of badly needed resources. Classrooms are in disrepair, and students are taught from crumbling, out-of-date textbooks. Roughly a fifth of the school districts in the state are so strapped for funds that they hold classes just four days a week. And the state’s teachers have not seen a raise in 10 years, pushing their salaries to nearly the lowest in the nation.

Teachers in the state often must work second jobs just to stay off public assistance. Chronically low pay has driven other teachers off to search for work in other states, or it has pushed them out of the profession entirely. Predictably enough, these conditions have contributed to a deepening teacher shortage, which the state has tried to fill by issuing a record number of “emergency” certifications to individuals who otherwise lack the education or qualifications to teach. With fewer teachers, class sizes have increased, and course offerings for students have been cut.

A similar picture of long-neglected students, teachers, and schools provoked the nine-day walkout in West Virginia that ultimately led to a significant increase in school funding, including a 5% pay increase for teachers and other school staff. The same is true in Arizona, where educators who have been dogged for years by low pay and overcrowded classes are organizing their own walkout. And in Kentucky, protests have erupted after educators were blindsided by a hastily passed bill undermining the pensions that serve as their sole source of retirement security (school employees in Kentucky do not participate in Social Security).

After years of red-state legislatures systemically undermining public education, the unofficial anthem of this movement rings true: “We’re not gonna take it anymore.” Educators are always willing to go the extra mile for their students. And now, with the support of students, parents, and communities, they are taking matters into their own hands and demanding change.

The scene playing out now should put the Supreme Court on notice as it considers a ruling in Janus v. AFSCME. It is no coincidence that West Virginia, Oklahoma, Kentucky, and Arizona are all so-called “right to work” states with weak or no public-sector collective-bargaining laws. In states like these — where anti-union laws frustrate educators’ ability to come together to advocate for quality public schools through the stable, formal channels of mature collective bargaining — the only meaningful option available is for educators to press their demands through mass protest and the disruptions in public services that those entail.

It doesn’t have to be this way. When educators can join together and bargain effectively as partners with school administrators, the benefits to all are clear. The improved teacher salaries and school funding that accompany these arrangements translate into a more skilled and stable teaching workforce, which in turn equips our students and communities for success.

But if the Supreme Court deals a blow to public-sector collective bargaining in Janus, the fight for quality public schools could grow even harder. Just look at what Governor Walker’s infamous Act 10 did to Wisconsin public education.  After the Act gutted public-sector bargaining and eliminated fair share fees, teacher compensation dropped, turnover rates increased, and teacher experience dropped significantly. And, in turn, Wisconsin saw drops in statewide student achievement on science and math, due in large part to the loss of an experienced teaching workforce.

The Janus Court should recognize that state and local governments have strong, even compelling, interests both in elevating the quality of education and other public services through robust collective bargaining, and in avoiding the damage to those services caused by weak labor protections. But if the Court decides otherwise—and constitutionally enshrines a nationwide “right to work” law throughout the public sector—educators, other public servants, and the communities they serve won’t be silenced. What’s happening in Oklahoma, West Virginia, Kentucky, and Arizona could be coming soon to a state capital near you.

The Rise of Plea Bargains and Fall of the Right to Trial

On March 8, the American Constitution Society and the National Bar Association presented “The Rise of Plea Bargains and Decline of the Right to Trial,” featuring a panel of experts who have worked in the trenches of our criminal justice system as prosecutors, public defenders, advocates, and researchers. The panel tackled the thorny issues that arise when plea bargains become an indispensable part of our criminal justice systems—systems that are now far too large to efficiently allow every criminally accused individual to exercise their right to a jury trial.

Six years ago, in his opinion for the majority in Missouri v. Frye, Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy observed that “[i]n today’s criminal justice system the negotiation of a plea bargain, rather than the unfolding of a trial, is almost always the critical point for a defendant,” and, in fact declared that plea bargaining “is not some adjunct to the criminal justice system; it is the criminal justice system.” Today, more than 95 percent of cases that resolve in a conviction are the result of plea bargains.

As panelist Jenny Roberts , co-director of the Criminal Justice Clinic at American University Washington College of Law, explained, a number of factors have led to the ubiquity of plea bargains in the criminal justice system. Bail, she asserts, is the single biggest factor in guilty pleas in misdemeanor cases. Melba Pearson, a former state prosecutor in Miami-Dade County, agreed, explaining, “If you are in jail because of a cash bail you can’t pay, pleas can sound like a great alternative to losing your job, failing to pay rent, and a variety of other negative consequences.”

Additionally, Roberts cited the power of prosecutors to overcharge and leverage draconian sentencing laws to make the risk of going to trial seem too great for many defendants. Combined with the sheer volume of criminal case, and misdemeanor cases in particular, which make it impractical if not impossible to try all criminal cases, and the rise of plea bargains was inevitable. She was quick to point out, however, that “the system is too large by design,” and that we can control the size and severity of our criminal justice system. If the political will existed, we could address overcriminalization and mandatory minimums, and thereby substantially scale back the size of our system.

The pervasiveness of plea bargains brings with it many troubling consequences. Avis Buchanan, director of the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia, noted “When you accept an early plea, you lose the chance to understand the evidence more completely. You might get a “favorable” bargain relative to what you think the charge could be, but can’t factor in what exculpatory evidence might be available.” The panel agreed that this can, and often does, lead to defendants pleading guilty to crimes for which they are not culpable or accepting lengthier sentences than they otherwise would have received.

As with so many other features of the criminal justice system, plea bargains also have a disparate impact on people of color. A recent study revealed that prosecutors were more likely to offer charge reductions to white defendants than black defendants. According to the study’s findings, black defendants with no prior convictions were twenty-five percent less likely than white defendants with no prior conviction to have the initial charges dropped or reduced to a lesser crime. Those white defendants who face initial felony charges were, therefore, less likely than black defendants to be convicted of a felony, and, in misdemeanor case, more likely to be convicted for crimes carrying no prison sentence or not being convicted at all. Buchanan noted that even defense counsel can bring biases that exacerbate racial disparities in outcomes.

In the end, the panelists offered a range of ways to address the problem with plea bargaining, including changing the culture in prosecutor offices, reforming our bail systems, and removing the points of coercion that make it impossible for many defendants to make thoughtful, voluntary decisions about their cases. Regardless of the reforms undertake, the panelist all agreed that plea bargaining will continue to play large role in our system.

Watch the entire discussion here.